


Years of War

by HeloiseLavellan



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Original characters - Fandom
Genre: Adventuring Party, Demons, Elves, F/M, Free Marches, Half-Elves, Humans, M/M, Mages, Magisters, Orlais, Qunari, Templars, Tevinter, rogues - Freeform, warriors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-12 18:03:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7944043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeloiseLavellan/pseuds/HeloiseLavellan





	Years of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of how a wanted templar, an escaped circle mage, a Tevinter slave, and an excommunicated qunari became acquainted, and the complicated matters in between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been interested in both Dungeons & Dragons, and Dragon Age for a long time. I was more than pleasantly surprised to find out about the tabletop RPG game that combined both. My friends, and I arranged to meet, and play it, and we did. The campaign lasted a depressing one session length (in which my friends, and I almost all perished, if not for our friend, who was a mage) but I was still invested in the characters I had created for it, so I decided to write my own campaign.
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE: ALL CHARACTERS ARE MINE, BUT THE SETTING, AND WORLD THEY EXIST IN BELONG TO BIOWARE.

THE DAUGHTER OF TEVINTER

Solis / Solace  
7:84 Storm  
Val Foret (Outskirts)

"Though all before me is shadow,  
Yet shall the Maker be my guide.  
I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond.  
For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light  
And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost."  
— Trials 1:14

Ser Marceau De Sauveterre laid the bloodied, unconscious elf on the ground, albeit gently. He needed answers from the young elven woman, and her breathless corpse would offer him nothing, except for a fruitless silence he could make little use out of. Tying a rope around her lithe wrists, Ser Marceau tethered the length of the rope around a nearby tree; allowing her little chance of struggling free from her bonds. When he had fastened the rope around the thick trunk, he came to kneel beside the young woman, her small chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths; which meant he still had an ample amount of time remaining. Plucking the many daggers and knives from her person, Ser Marceau noticed something he had dismissed before. Covering the exposed flesh of her arms, and back was smooth, long since healed scar tissue that seemed to be everywhere upon her. He knew nothing of the young woman before him, and he could scarcely imagine what harrowing ordeals she had faced to acquire so much lasting damage.

"Kaffas!" the young woman spat, spitting blood from her mouth unpleasantly, leaving her full lips red and dripping savagely.

Having been so preoccupied over the young woman's apparent struggles of the past, Ser Marceau had failed to take notice of her beginning to come back to herself. Placing a few paces between himself, and the stranger on the ground in front of him, he withdrew the longsword he wore in a heavy sheath on his belt as he watched the elf try to squirm out of her restrictive bindings he had so tactfully fastened.

"You may cease your struggling any moment now. You're just wasting your time, as well as my own." he said plainly.

The young woman stopped then, looking up to meet his guarded expression, she had the presence of a hungry animal, wanton of prey. Her thick, curling black hair had since fallen loose from its braid, leaving it to flow freely down her back, and her eyes, black and unforgiving as a winter night, were brimming with unbound, primal hostility.

"You," she said, her voice unnervingly calm, "the templar from Val Royeaux, you were shadowing me. Although I find it something of a surprise that you managed to get past my better instincts...with that clanky battle skirt your kind so enjoy to adorn yourselves in."

Ser Marceau gazed down at the armor he had worn for so many years of his life, his attention drawn back to the young woman when he heard her give a short, mocking laugh.

"Forgot you were wearing it? I personally would have chosen cloth or leather, but then again, who wants to risk the attention of being mistaken for a mage in such...malevolent times as these."

A mage...a maleficar. An individual who possessed the ability to work and weave the fragile essences of the Fade, or as the Templar Order saw them: creatures of unbridled destruction, and magical finesse, open and weak to possession. Ser Marceau had witnessed the wrath of a mage firsthand, what they could unleash upon the world if they had the freedom everyone else carried throughout their average lives. He had watched good friends perish, watched them get torn asunder by a maleficar possessed in the midst of their Harrowing. Magic existed to serve man, and never to rule over him.

Pressing his longsword against the young woman's exposed throat, Ser Marceau found himself grow uneasy when she gave a stark bark of laughter.

"Such eagerness to draw your weapon upon another, templar. I, myself, possess no magical potential as it stands before us, no weapon of such a caliber, unfortunately, for us both." the young woman's mouth curved in one corner, a subtle, dismissable reaction, "And as for death, it would be no burden for me, an inconvenience at its worst; a blessing at its greatest."

Ser Marceau found himself unwavering in his resolve, refusing to act on the elf's baiting taunt. He would not provide her a death so obviously yearned for. Lowering his weapon away from the young woman's throat, he took a cautious step towards her.

"If you are not a mage, then what is it you claim to be?"

Spilling more blood from her bleeding mouth, the young woman gave her response, "I make no claims. I had no expectations to be struck down by a poncy, Orlesian skirt-wearer. Maker, damn you."

Ser Marceau found he disliked the elf's boastful, challenging tone of arrogance, and once again drew the longsword against the base of her throat. Although unlike before, he dug the blade's sharp tip into her flesh, just enough to draw blood.

"My, my, such fickleness you have within yourself. You waver and fluctuate so unlike the rest of your brothers, although given your...ancestry, I should find myself unsurprised."

He had not realized what he had done until he heard the young woman emit a guttural cry, sharp and raw, she hissed in a short, uneven breath. Mouth falling open in surprise, Ser Marceau let fall his longsword, abandoning it beside himself on the ground next to them. Kneeling before the elf, he could easily see where the sharp blade of the longsword dug in deeply into the young woman's left shoulder. Blood was oozing out of the wound at a steady, yet somewhat restrainable flow, but before he could bring his hands to pull away the leather armor covering it, the young woman gave him a hard kick to the stomach.

"You bastard!" she growled at him, her teeth red, and bloodied from where she had bitten down upon her tongue when the blade had sunken in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if I will be posting the complete chapter, or even the rest of the story, but for the sake of being serendipitous I decided to put up a preview of the first chapter. I am a little nervous about putting something that I've written online (for many reasons), but I hope someome will find enjoyment from this snippet I've posted.
> 
> Dareth shiral,  
> Miranda
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE: ALL CHARACTERS ARE MINE, BUT THE SETTING, AND WORLD THEY EXIST IN BELONG TO BIOWARE.


End file.
